Political pressures put immigration overhaul in doubt

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, March 22, 2007

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50th Congressional District candidate Brian Bilbray speaks at a town council meeting held at the Doubletree Hotel in San Diego Thursday, April 6, 2006. A special election is being held April 11 to fill the seat left vacant in November 2005 when Randall "Duke" Cunningham resigned after pleading guilty to accepting $2.4 million worth of bribes from a contractor.. (AP Photo/Denis Poroy)Ran on: 04-13-2006
Democrat Francine Busby (center) will be in a runoff against Brian Bilbray (left) or Eric Roach. less

50th Congressional District candidate Brian Bilbray speaks at a town council meeting held at the Doubletree Hotel in San Diego Thursday, April 6, 2006. A special election is being held April 11 to fill the seat ... more

Photo: DENIS POROY

Political pressures put immigration overhaul in doubt

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2007-03-22 04:00:00 PDT Washington -- The big immigration overhaul promised by Democrats and the Bush administration this year is foundering before it even gets off the ground.

Last year's Senate effort to create a guest worker program and a path to citizenship for the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants was killed by House Republicans who insisted on an enforcement-only crackdown. But now that Democrats are in charge of Congress, their divisions -- obscured by last year's GOP brawl -- are coming into the open.

The political pressures from all sides, and the early start to the presidential campaign, make it possible that significant immigration reform may not happen until a new president occupies the White House.

The administration has sharply stepped up its lobbying, trying to find common ground with Republican senators in hopes that President Bush can this year achieve the major immigration overhaul he has sought from the start of his presidency. Yet Bush's political standing even within his own party is so depleted that it's not clear whether he brings much heft to the table.

And after taking fire from both parties last year for lax immigration enforcement, the administration has infuriated Republicans and Democrats alike with raids on employers hiring illegal immigrants and "fugitive aliens" evading deportation orders.

Fresno Mayor Alan Autry, a Republican, last week threatened a lawsuit against the administration for a sweep in nearby Mendota (Fresno County) that led to the arrest of about 200 people on immigration violations. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., wrote to the administration Tuesday complaining that a 7-year-old U.S. citizen was swept up in a March 6 raid in San Rafael.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who is heading this year's push for an immigration overhaul, on Tuesday denounced raids at a New Bedford, Mass., leather goods factory, that involved "helicopters and attack dogs and handcuffing women and children and separating mothers that are breast-feeding infants."

House Democrats last year never had to vote on a broad legalization and guest worker bill, because Republicans were so busy killing it. But many of their newly elected members who captured Republican seats in last November's election campaigned on vigorous enforcement of the immigration laws.

Even though the House Republicans' proposal for a 700-mile fence on the Mexico border failed to deliver the election salvation they prayed for last year, it was popular enough to pass the Senate and House with hefty Democratic support. And two Republican supporters of last year's broad Senate effort to provide a path to legalization for current undocumented workers and a guest worker plan -- Sens. Bill Frist of Tennessee and Mike DeWine of Ohio -- are no longer in the Senate.

The makeup of the Democrats in the Senate, too, has changed, as has the party's commitment to a comprehensive plan.

Feinstein, who voted for last year's Senate bill, said she now is pushing a narrower temporary worker and legalization program for farmworkers. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., endorsed the fence and denounced the Senate bill throughout her successful campaign last fall.

Last year's GOP fight also served to obscure the deep split within labor, with the heavily Latino service worker unions favoring a temporary worker program that allows a path to citizenship, and the AFL-CIO and Teamsters likening any such program to a new form of indentured servitude.

Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican now stumping in Iowa and New Hampshire for the GOP presidential nomination, contends he is still negotiating a legalization and guest worker program with Kennedy, his co-sponsor on last year's expansive Senate bill.

But in campaigning, McCain is stressing enforcement and talking up a proposal by conservative Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., for a temporary worker program that would require illegal immigrants to leave the United States before being allowed to obtain a new temporary work visa, and would not be put on track for citizenship. Such a plan is a likely deal breaker for Kennedy and many Democrats.

Sen. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican now running for the GOP presidential nomination as a social conservative, supported last year's Senate bill and took tremendous heat for doing do. This year he is lying low.

"I told these guys they were going to get their clocks cleaned if they went to the heartland with this," said Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Carlsbad (San Diego County), who survived four elections last year, including a primary and runoff in Southern California, with a vigorous anti-illegal immigration stand. Bilbray has taken over the leadership of the House Immigration Reform Caucus from firebrand Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo.

Kennedy said this week that he would have to have a bill on the floor by May and "no later than June" if anything is to pass in this Congress. It is widely assumed that a controversial immigration overhaul would never make it through Congress while the parties jockey during next year's wide-open presidential contest.

But weeks of negotiations between Kennedy and McCain failed to yield a new bill, and Kennedy has decided instead to use last year's Senate Judiciary Committee bill as a vehicle in the interest of speeding things up.

"It's five steps forward and 10 steps backward," said Laura Reiff, co-chair of the Essential Worker Coalition, a business group lobbying for an immigration overhaul. "There's a short window here. The common wisdom, and I share it, is we will not see major legislation passed in '08, so it's going to be necessary to do something in '07, and that window is closing."

Reps. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., will introduce their own comprehensive bill today, after abandoning the McCain-Kennedy negotiations. It will contain a controversial provision requiring immigrants in the United States illegally to leave the country before applying for new work visas.

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the San Jose Democrat now chairing the House immigration subcommittee, is a supporter of an expansive bill. But she has not committed to anything yet and instead is in a "listening mode," canvassing House members.

Democrats were more enthusiastic at the start of the year. Rep. Howard Berman, D-North Hollywood (Los Angeles County), who is pushing for a new farmworker bill, said in January, "Democrats cannot afford to do what Republicans just did -- pretend you're going to do something and create a dynamic where you don't deal with it. We can't afford not to do it."

Bilbray predicted immigration will prove the undoing of Democrats.

"If Democrats pass a bill giving amnesty, it will be a fast track to their losing their majority," he said.

Bilbray speculated the reason House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco has not made immigration a high priority is that she prefers to let the Senate "jump off the cliff" before putting her own House majority to tough votes.

Despite fervent talk of tougher enforcement last year, politicians on both sides of the aisle have complained publicly and privately to administration officials in the wake of recent immigration enforcement raids, including crackdowns at chicken packing houses in Arkansas and Midwest meatpacking operations.

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Officials at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement take strong issue with charges that the recent crackdown is aimed at pushing legislators to enact an immigration overhaul, and deny that the raids are leaving abandoned children in their wake.

"This may sound radical, but we are trying to enforce the law as written," said Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security. Baker said a "profound mistrust that we couldn't enforce the law or wouldn't enforce the law" has been an obstacle to overhauling the law, and the increase in enforcement may help change those perceptions.

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